Chuck’s Commentary - How Lindsey Graham Should Be Remembered + When Moderates Fail…The Radicals Ascend bölümünün tam dökümü

people are expressing their own reaction through essentially their own politics, or their own belief system or their own set of beliefs of where they wish Lindsey Graham were or whatever it is, right, and you sort of see it, and I think that, Look, I've done this over thirty years, and I will tell you this. I think there's really two types of politicians, two types of elected excuse me, two types of elected officials, audiologues and politicians. And you may think, well, that's simplistic, but hear me out. The ideologue has a belief system and they essentially want to get elected, to pursue and to persuade and to get more people believing, and to sort of plant a flag, dig a hole whatever it is, dig a trench, to keep their movement alive. And essentially they want their movement to be the mainstream of American politics. Perhaps they're fighting that make the movement the mainstream of the Democratic Party. Perhaps they're trying to make their movement the mainstream of the Republican Party. But you get my drift. You have your ideologues and then you have your politicians. What do I mean by a politician? So take Bill Clinton and Ted Cruz. I think these are two good examples. These guys are politicians first and ideologue second. You may think, what are you talking about? Both of them are. It's a partisan Democrat and a partisan Republican. But they're very careful to try to follow where they think things are going a little bit right, and their goal was to be in the game, if you will, be in the middle of it. So with Lindsey Graham, I made this comparison that many ways, Lindsey Graham and Joe Biden were mirror images of each other as US senators. I know some of you can't remember Joe Biden the senator versus Joe Biden the Vice president and president. But Joe Biden the Senator politically was always that They always tried to make sure he was in the middle of where the Democratic Party was, not necessarily in the middle of where American politics was. Lindsey Graham I would describe as the same way that ultimately he was trying not to be in the middle of where American politics was. He was trying to be in the middle of where he thought the Republican Party was. He never wanted to be unfriendly with any wing of the Republican Party. Now part of that is pragmatic. He got elected state centered from South Carolina. South Carolina very much a state that, at least for the last you know, going to the sort of the original the rise of the sort of strong Thurman was a party switcher. So really Carol Campbell, the late Carrol Campbell was in some ways, and you have Lee Atwater and all this stuff. You want to go real deep there in South Carolina Republican politics, but sort of you know, we're the founding fathers of the modern South Carolina Republican Party. And Lindsay Graham was definitely a student of that modern movement of and in some ways a part of it, you know, sort of I think, you know, was young and was coming up when Carol Campbell was sort of the

first of the Republican statewide office holders to find success without having to have been a Democrat first, right, which was which was some of the you know, seventies and eighties versions of the South Carolina Republican Party. But when you follow so there's two ways to look at Lindsay. When you see his you know, his shift from sort of being McCain's wing man to Trump's wingman, many people looked at it and saw him, well, McCain never never, you know, never bought into Trump, wided Lindsay. And I'm gonna even my answer as a political anthropologist, not necessarily we're my own principles. I think we all think we have an idea of how we would behave under that circumstance. But I do want to remind you how, you know, perhaps how Lindsey Graham's and what we don't fully understand is Lindsay Graham's own relationship with that Senen See. I could tell you my belief. I believe that Senate seat was as important to him as a spouse. You could have said the same thing about John McCain and his relationship with the senac right. The Senate gave John McCain relevance, and he liked being relevant and he liked being in the middle of things. I think Lindsey Graham very similar. I think the Senate seat gives him relevance, gave him relevance, and he always wanted to be in the middle of everything. And whatever you think of Lindsay Grant, this is why when I say there's audiologues and there's politicians, he was definitely a politican. And sometimes we love a politician when they adopt our point of view, and we think politicians are incredibly unprincipled and bought off when they somehow, maybe once flirted with our side. But it's somehow on the other side love something. So I think we are understandably can be harsh critics to that. Remember I'm not here to say you're right or wrong about this. I am trying to really be explanatory in this situation, and ultimately right history is. We'll see how kind or unkind history is to Lindsay and whether whether history will either reaffirm Lindsay what many believe many believe was a mistake by Lindsay, or whether he will somehow be proven correct on his decision to do what he did. But the fact is it doesn't change who he is, and that's who he was, right. He was a politician who yes, he was a Republican because that was the only way to succeed in politics in South Carolina in the as he was coming up right in the in the eighties, going into the nineties and deciding to make this a career. And that's why I always throw Ted CRUs in there at I think these are I think there are certain people that are political animals and would run would have run for office as I think if Texas were a liberal, deep blue state, Ted Cruz would have fashioned himself as a movement progressive and done his best to try to get elected the Senate. I don't say this to criticize to I just think there are certain people are political animals, and they or attracted to politics, but they wanted and they're attracted to politics to get access to power and influence and relevance, and so their own geography essentially pushes them to just sort of decide that I'm going to be generous here that is most pragmatic for having a successful political career from that geographic area. Again, I you know, I think you have to. You could say I'm being either too generous or cynical all at the same time. I'm just telling you making this sort of through my That's why I joke that these days I call myself a political anthropologist. I'm trying to explain how these strange tribes interact with each other. So look, I do think that the Lindsay legacy is again going to be through this prism of what you think of Trump and what you think of the Trump era, and how existential you believe the Trump arra has moved things. And for you, some of you, it's totally unforgivable that Lindsay's been too much of an enabler. I think for others you would say, hey, Lindsay was just trying to be in the room. And I think here's where some Republican senators would defend Lindsay very quietly, where your romney' would defend Lindsay. Shoot, where you're Chris van Hollins or your Mark Warners with defend Lindsay at least when it came to him being a United States Senator. And let me put it in these terms, you'll have a hard time finding many senators say negative things about Lindsay Graham, not just out of respect, but genuinely. He was somebody just about every senator found a way to work with and there would be some issue you could work with. When it came to Lindsey Graham, it's very similar, frankly to what you would hear, particularly in the last ten years of his career in the Senate Ted Kennedy. What you'd hear many Republicans, maybe not say very loudly, but they would say and they certainly said it after he passed away. Well, let me tell you about Ted Kennedy. Man, I was able to get this done because of Ted Kennedy, and it was these compliments were coming to the right. Lindsay loved the Senate, and Lindsay wanted to be in the middle of everything. That's why you found him in Barack Obama's oval office, and that's why you found him in Donald Trump's office. The same guy that found his way to Obama is the same guy that found his way to Trump. Because ultimately his north Star was whatever it took to be relevant, to be in the middle of everything, as he himself right, And I think the there there. I think plenty of the critiques that come at him are through the prism of well, I wouldn't have done that. I can't believe he did. Here's one thing I would like to I always remind people when I do this in my own household, everybody has a line that once Trump crosses it, there out there are plenty of people that keep moving the line. You have certainly plenty of rhetoric through the years where Lindsay himself has moved the line on Trump. And this is where I would say, as if he were a navy man, we'd say he's a sailor because he knows how to He will tack to where the wind is blowing. And as long as the wind was blowing in Trump's

direction, he was not going to feel comfortable being Liz Chaney. He wasn't going to feel comfortable. That's not who he is. And again you could say that that's weak, that is what it is. But it is a subjective. It is subjective. And again, history, I think over time will tell us whether that was something that was more destructive to the US Senate and to American politics and to the Republican Party, or whether it was helpful at the time, because here's what you will hear, and this is where this has real world impact on the near term, and this is now the near term fallout. Look, by the way, one more quick thing before I get to the fallout in the United States Senate fallout in campaign twenty twenty six, both of which I want to get to in pretty short order. You're going to see a lot of conspiracy theories. You already are seeing conspiracy theories. You're going to see conspiracy theories having to do that somehow the Russians were behind this. You're gonna have conspiracy theories that somehow the Iranians are behind this. And you're going to have conspiracy theories about his personal life that are going to start to surface. You're going to have people trying to sell all sorts of stories on this. Some of them might be true, some of them will be hard to verify. But I know that that's unfortunately a place at were that the Internet is going to go, and it's going to force itself into the mainstream whether we want it or not. So I would say this. I think it is healthy considering how distrustful our world is and how our enemies are going to try to weaponize this death the rings they're better be a just have the autopsy, just make sure it's a very just you know, it is unfortunate that this is the world we live in, but I think it's healthier if people can see that. It's like the most likely result is a seventy one year old man who flies around the world a lot, just came back from a ten hour trip, carries plenty of stress that we know of, and frankly, there may be plenty of stress in his personal life that we know nothing about. Because that's another thing. There's a lot of people, myself included, who all have their theories about Lindsay, who all have their ideas about Lynd. And there was a time I considered I had a pretty good sort of professional relationship reporter to source with him, and then it was less so, and there was sort of a I don't know what happened to him with to me, I could just tell you a couple of incidents that he knows are true, and perhaps it explains things. But when I interviewed him and McCain on January sixth, twenty seventeen. We're sort of at the height of the Russia situation and the concern about what did Russia, you know, how did they infiltrate our politics? Well, off the record, they were the ones telling myself and plenty of other reporters about this. This spy overseas named Christopher Steele, who had had his own sort of research that he'd been doing, the so called Steele Dosier. And it's always been something that everybook. This is one of those things that everybody in Washington knows, but it sort of doesn't get said a lot, Which is probably the two people that helped give credibility to the Steele Dosia more than anybody else in sort of Washington was John McCain and Lindsey Graham. It wasn't John Brennan and James Comy that which of course have since become sort of the central focus of Donald Trump. It really was Graham and McCain who brought this to the FBI and to our intelligence folks. So this was and there certainly were plenty of intelligence sources. Now some of you who don't believe in any of this may say Hey, you may think Graham and McCain were being used. Others will say, aha, I knew it, and there it is. But I do think I owe it to you to This is sort of how I've, why I've where I operate from. When it comes to this story and its origin, story, I think has never been fully fully appreciated. This episode of the Chuck Podcast is brought to you by Ethos, and what Ethos does is it helps you find life insurance. Let me tell you why life insurance bailed me out. My father died when I was sixteen. We didn't have a lot of money when it happened, and we were in a pretty tough financial spot after it happened. I'm an only child. Suddenly my mother's single, single mother. She had a job, suddenly lost a job, looking for another job, and we were struggling. You know, my dad didn't leave us in the best financial situation, but he did make one purchase. He bought a life insurance policy. Wasn't a huge chunk of change, but it was enough when we found it. 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You can get up to three million dollars in coverage and some policies are as low as thirty dollars a month, and you'll get your lowest rate from their network of trusted carriers. So take ten minutes to get covered today with life insurance through Ethos. Get your free quote at ethos dot com slash chuck that is e Thos dot com slash chuck. Application times may vary and rates may vary again it's something that any a buddy that actually covered that era and covered the first term. Oh yeah, that's right. Lindsay and McCain were two of the you know, they seem to be well briefed and

well versed on what was in that thing before many other people. Look, within four days of that interview, that thing would explode and then of course the rest is history. BuzzFeed did, frankly, I think one of the biggest mistakes in journalism. But that's a that's a that's something that I have litigated in the past and I won't relitigate at the moment. But look, you can't tell the complete story on this in that front. I'm sorry to his family. Look, I think those of you, I hope you spend a few minutes. You may not have liked Lindsay Graham's politics. You may think he has been all sorts of bad things, but I'll tell you. You know, you may think you understand his personal life and the decisions he may or may not have made throughout his life, but do understand this fact. Here's a young man who is in college when both of his parents have passed away. One died of Cancer's father dies of a heart attack. He's got a thirteen year old sister at home, he's in college. He's suddenly needing to raise her. That's what he does. He eventually adopts her so she can be eligible for military benefits that came to him while he served. So, you know, I do think when you're assessing somebody's legacy, don't leave out their personal legacy. Don't leave out that that stuff either. We're all complicated, we're all human beings, so do know that. So none of us can crawl inside his head. Here's a guy who had to immediately go into adulthood, who maybe immediately never had a social life when he was younger, when most of us are trying to go meet people and all this. So the point is that there's going to be a lot there and we you know, and again I have my theory. We all have our theories. At the end of the day, I think that sentence was a spouse. I think he love that sentence more than anything. I also know he came from a generation that perhaps he didn't think he could be successful in politics in South Carolina. If he were, if if if if he was publicly somehow a different kind of a different person as far as the public is concerned. Again, I don't believe it's my place to sort of decide, oh, he must be this, and he must be that. I'm not naive. I fully get it. I know what's been out there. I know. In fact, I'll tell you a funny little one of my early Lindsay Graham anecdotes. I'd written a column back in my National Journal days, and it was a column about people the dark course candidates for two thousand and four presidential you know, if it was really about two thousand and eight, you know, I think now I know that's exactly what's right, dark horse candidates for two thousand and eight, right after, right after Bush won reelection. And I had Lindsay grahamont there, and I just had like a two liner. I'd do one of these comms. It was called on the Trail back in the day for National Journal, and I think my one line was something like, but he's probably got to get married if he's serious about getting involved in presidential politics. And I had a friend of his immediately say to me, he loved that you mentioned him as a presidential candidate. And he laughed and he said, well, he's probably right, I got to get married, so let me go find a spouse, which in some ways was was That was what was so charming about Lindsay. He could wink a nod to everything that was being said about him. He knew the rumors, and I think the fact that he rarely, if ever addressed them directly was a Lindsey winkn a nod. But again, I think none of us can crawl inside his head, none of us live that early life that he lived. So all I would say is, you know, we're all three dimensional human beings. Just remember that, especially as we watch what is going to be a pretty destructive conspiracy theory laden harabbitals. And you know what, I'm not going to sit here and tell you I'm a one hundred percent sure of anything, Okay, I don't operate life through that way. I'm an Okham's razor person. And I think the most likely scenario is the scenario seventy one year old man is burning the candle at both ends, working seven days a week, always up, always doing these things, perhaps carrying around personal stuff that we don't know about, dies of cardiac arrest, whose father also that cardiac arrest. So sometimes Ockham's razor is just that Ockham's racer. Okay, Now let's do the real world impact of the loss of Lindsay Graham. Lindsay's chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. This is a gigantic problem for Todd Blanche, who is probably, in my opinion, the most unqualified person ever nominated to be Attorney General. Matt Gates included. I say this because Matt Gates wasn't the personal lawyer for the president. I think this couldn't be more unethical. And so the point is Lindsay was going to be the protector of Blanche. Lindsay's the guy that could sell Tom Tillis. Lindsay's the guy that can sell Susan Collins. Lindsay's the guy he's been the moderate senator whisperer those that don't like Trump inside the Republican Party. It's Lindsay Graham that takes messages from them to the President and from the President to them. In many ways. There's a huge loss for John Thune. John Thune does not have a great personal relationship with Donald Trump. Lindsey Graham would be who he could use and messages through. It's how Mitch McConnell operated when he couldn't get along with Donald Trump. This is a massive vacuum. Lindsay was a trusted senator inside that Republican conference. Whatever you think of him from what you think the outside reputation of his was, I can tell you inside he was very trusted and very and seen as vital in that bridge between Trump and the US Senate whenever there would be problems there. There's no obvious replacement to fill that vacuum. In fact, if you look at what's about happened to the Senate Republicans here, you're seeing a massive sort of the sort of the rational senators are leaving us left and right. There's no Cornant, there's no Tellus, there's no Cassidy, there's no Graham. There might not be a Collins. We'll see what

happens in Maine. Right. That is, that was a ballast that kept the Senate Republicans from behaving like the House Republicans. You take all five of those senators away, you got like Todd Young and Jerry Moran and Lisa Murkowski left. That may not be enough, right each one of them. I think Andy Barr, who's going to replace Mitch McConnell is not a real trumpy guy, so it's likely he's a bit ends up looking a bit more like a John Cornyn for instance. Certainly a conservative, but not necessarily trumpy an. He comes from the Republican Party of the pre Trump era, and that's usually you know, did they get Yeah? I always say this, The way to understand Republican politics and where these folks really are is did they get elected pre Trump or not? Right, those that got elected since Trump came on stage are going to be more trumpy and more deferential to Trump and the MAGA movement than those that figured out how to get elected before. That's just human nature, right, So this is a massive loss. I think what was already an uphill battle for Todd Blanche probably is even harder. Now. We'll see who ends up running this be given that the he was chair of the committee. Whether there's just the next person in line, or whether Thune decides to have somebody else run it, I'm certain it's we're going to be I'll be curious to see whether this slows down the confirmation process a little bit, but make no mistake, that's an issue. But Lindsay also served as a way to keep Trump from sort of going way down the American first nationalist, borderline fascist rabbit hole. Right, Lindsay would grab him and think right like he was constantly And this is where, you know, some people can't stomach the fact that this is a role that he played, and you could. Again, I am just telling you the role he played. I'll let you just judge. I'll let you. I'm sure plenty of you will judge him on this, And I, like I said, I'm gonna I have one more story for you and on him that will at least let you understand where I stand on him. But I'm just trying to explain the role he played. He did do that. He kepped Trump from from totally going down some crazy, even crazier rabbit holes that is possible. So this has a this is a huge hole, you know. I look at the Senate Todd Young, I think shares Lindsey Graham's concern about the international rule world order. I think sees Putin as the threat that he is unlike Trump, but he does not have Trump's He just doesn't have Trump's here or influence. Right. What made Lindsey unique in this respect is here was probably you know, he was just in Ukraine, right, he have Trump from abandoning Ukraine. He did, That's why you saw what Zelenski said. He absolutely did. And you know you see baby Nat Yahoo. Some of you may be ecstatic about the fault what I'm about to say here, but he's probably was somebody that kept Republicans from totally abandoning Israel. So the point is he is going, he leaves a gigantic vacuum in the Senate. Who fills it is not clear at all. I think, like I said, Todd Young and him share Dan Sullivan and Alaska, though he's got his own if if he wins re election. Sullivan, you know, he remember when he first got elected, he told I asked him who did he align himself with? And he called himself a McCain Republican. Again, I don't know how often he will say that these days, given who runs the party, but that's certainly Dan Sullivan's instincts. And in a Senate where Trump's no longer president or even influential, perhaps that's the direction it goes. But David McCormick's another one that I imagine might want to and he's somebody that might have an ability to forge the personal relationship with the president. That might be the go between between the sort of the non Trump Republican wing, which does exist. It's not huge, but it's consequential and that so that's probably where I would turn to to see, you know, but it's a huge facuate and it's going to impact Trump negatively by the way you start counting up votes. Now, the way the South Carolina law works is as follows. First of all, it's very laid out. He's the nominee. There's literally we already know the dates of the special elections because it's written in the state constitution. It is filing deadline open second Tuesday after the death. Well that's a week from tomorrow. Two weeks after that is the primary, and if a off is necessary, two weeks after that. So we are looking at a mid August primary. I think the second Tuesday in August, and then two tuesdays later a likely runoff. And again I suspect you will see a crowded feel. I suspect you'll see Nancy Mays. I doubt Mikky Haley runs because I don't think she wants to lose, and Trump may go out of his way, unless somehow she became a consensus candidate, which I'm skeptical of the one person that might become a consensus candidate. But I'm a bit skeptical as Henry McMaster, the outgoing governor. Trump loves him, and it's his appointment to make for the temporary side of things. Maybe, right, I could maybe see that happening, But I don't think that Deters Nancy Mayce. I don't think that Deters the gentleman that primaried Lindsay, that kept Lindsay, you know, under sixty, right around sixty, if I'm not mistaken. So I suspect this is going to be crowded. And by my goodness, congratulations political junkies, We've now got a special sort of convention ish firehouse primary like thing going on in Maine. We've got an actual new special primary and runoff likely runoff in South Carolina, all filling what is normally supposedly the slow news cycle of July and August. Well, it's a campaign here. There is never a slow news day in the Trump era, let alone a slow news week, let alone a slow news month. So with that, I think I want to pivot. This is where I want to pivot here to a few other things that I wanted to share with you this weekend. But look, we're going to have a lot on this going forward. Oh, one other quick thing I want to I want to mention here about Annie Andrews. She's

I interviewed on this podcast back in February. She is very much in the mainstream lane of Democratic politics, probably a little more little close to the center, more of a Joe Cunningham, you know, the last Democrat to win that House seat that Nancy Mace currently represents. Uh, they are so she's a doctor, she's no gatflaw. If this Republican primary gets super right wing and super sort of you know, the nominee ends up very hard to sell to your Charleston Republicans your uh, which is to me, it's sort of like that's that's that's that's the swing vote. Right. It's uh, I think I've described to you right the right around my son goes to schooled Smu're right around SMU is a very Republican neighborhood, except they haven't voted Republican for president since Mitt Romney. And that's kind of how I would describe the presidential at least when it comes to presidential vote. That part of Charleston is that sort of Republican chamber of commerce, Republican, college educated, Republican, you name it. That's why what happened here, and whether there is the inability I kind of think in today's politics where everybody's angry at the establishment and doesn't trust the establishment, that if you try to do a coronation, you will start a bigger fight than necessary. That's what Maine Democrats realize, which is why this is as open of a convention process as I've seen in some situation like this, and why I suspect it is just going to be let a thousand flowers bloom. It's South Carolina. Politics is sport in South Carolina. So pull up a chair and realize that the next six weeks are going to feel like a South Carolina presidential primary sort of sprint. If you will, I think it'll be that loud. I think it'll be that colorful, and perhaps that consequential. This episode of the Chuck Toddcast is brought to you by Soul. So if you love that end of the day unwined but hate the hangover, Soul's out of office is for you. These sparkling THCHC drinks and gummies give you the same relaxed social feeling without the alcohol, without the calories, and without the crash. Soul is a wellness brand that believes feeling good should be fun and easy. Soul specializes in delicious hemp derived THCHC and CBD products designed to boost your mood and help you unwind. Their best selling out of office gummies were designed to provide a mild, relaxing buzz, boost your mood and enhance creativity and relaxation. With five different strengths, you can tailor the dose to fit your vibe. So also has a variety of products specifically designed to help you get a better night's rest, including their top selling Sleepy Gummies, a fan favorite for deep, restorous sleep. Look, I have made no secret. I am a believer in this stuff, in cannabis and hemp derived. I do not partake in alcohol. For the most part, I think this stuff is a lot safer than alcohol, a lot less addictive than alcohol. And yes, I have to say I love these drinks. It is the glass of wine and you know after work, that's what

this is. So no hangover and no excess calories like this. I'm a big fan, So bring on the good vibes and treat yourself to sold today. Right now, Soul is offering my audience thirty percent off your entire order. Go to getsoul dot com and use the word podcast. That's getsoul dot com promo code podcast for thirty percent off. And yes, I too, am a customer. All right now, I want to share with you sort of wear my own sort of personal probably why why I could be a bit judgmental, certainly why my spouse is a bit judgmental. On Lindesday, we were on a plane, the three of us together, just happened to be sitting on one of those shuttles to New York. I was going up with my wife and Lindsey Graham was up there, you reckon. We had this long conversation, very animated conversations after Trump got elected, and many of you know, my wife is absolutely you know, it's been a Democrat for a long time, but an active Democrat, worked in democratic politics. And she says to him, I'm just so nervous, you know, are you know, are you gonna are you gonna protect us from the worst parts of of him? Or the fear and all this stuff that that she was expressing this time, and he was like, no, no, no, no, you know where that that is. It was this level of reassurance, this sort of and maybe this shows you just how an effective politician he was. He certainly had her condensed of who of of of who he will, of what he was going to be elect in the Senate. Now, a defender of Lindsay would say, well, he held his work that in order to protect packed the country from the worst elements of Trump, he had to get close to Trump. And as we know, there's a lot of people who've rationalized that their decision to keep power and say it was to get close to Trump. So I'm a skeptic on that stuff, but I do know that is how some might defend And I think and I just made out probably a pretty I think there's a lot of element to that with him. But I can tell you the passion with which he expressed his concerns and what he planned to do versus the behavior we would observe later was a one ade. I've done my best to explain it how I think he might explain it. I've done my best to explain it is in a variety of ways. Ultimately, I can't crawl inside his head, but that's what everybody sometimes, success or failure in politics is about making a choice. He made a choice and for him keeping that sentenceat you know, the fact is, had he gone hard on Trump, he would not have He'd have already lost his Senate seat in twenty twenty. And I think it's pretty obvious the calculation he made. But like I said, between his role in giving credibility to the Stele Dossi to so many reporters and Intel officials and his and sort of the things that he would like, I said, like a good politician, whoever he was talking to, he made them feel as if he heard them, he was listening, and he was responding, all right, let's leave Washington for a minute, go across the Atlantic, as I promised. One of the reasons I've I'm always keeping an eye on British politics is that, you know, for about the last decade, the UK and the United States have been living parallel political lives. Right. We may have different constitutions, we have different systems, we have different political traditions, but boy has been remarkable in how voters have expressed their frustrations both at the UK politicians and at the US politicians. They had Brexit, we had Trump, They've gone through It feels like I have a dozen prime ministers in less than a decade. Doesn't feel that way. They have. And we've now had three consecutive one term presidents for the first time in more than a century. We had two impeachments. They've had sort of what they call votes of no confidence. Right, their governing party collapsed. Ours traded control of Congress back and forth twice in both the House and the Senate in the last ten years, as voters keep firing whichever team happens to be in charge. So again, different systems, but the same restless electorate. Now quick refresher if you haven't been following British politics lately and why I'm dumping them. Okay, Labor came back into power, and Labor, of course basically their quote unquote Democratic Party. Labor came back into power after fourteen years in the wilderness. Keir Starmer became Prime Minister, promising competence and stability after the chaos of the Conservative years. Sounds familiar, right, Kir Starmer and the role of Joe Biden. Anyway, that honeymoon did not last very long. Hey, neither did Biden's honeymoon. Labor is now under new leadership, and if you believe many in the polls today, the party with the momentum though is not Labor or the Conservatives. At some point they're going to have to sit for election and you may see a brand new political party end up in charge of parliament in the UK, the Reform UK. This is Nigel Farage's party Right, And for those who've watched Farage for thirty years, it's actually a remarkable, remarkable the fact that he is on the cusp of becoming Prime minister. The man who says spent decades as sort of a professional outsider just throwing rocks at the establishment now actually has a plausible path to becoming prime minister. But of course, since many anticipate him being the favorite, he's gotten a lot more scrutiny of late, and now there's this scandal surrounding his financial disclosures and his lucrative crypto dealings. Basically, he has tried to turn his political fame into wealth, a familiar path that we've seen here in this country. And whether voters ultimately decide those accusations matter in some ways. Is besides the point. Farage's political response to this scandal has been fascinated. He decided to resign his parliamentary seat right and the idea seemed obvious. Force a special election, turn basically a new election for the same seat, and Farage would be on the ballot. Turn it into a referendum on Nigel himself ask voters for a simple question, you still believe me? Do you still want me?

Politically? It was high risk, but it's a high reward move. It's a way to just sort of get this. He doesn't want this to linger when the actual national election takes place, probably in a year or so. Until something uninspected happened, the other major parties mostly declined to give him the fight he wanted. Now we're not going to field candidates, said Labor Tories, you name it, Greens, etc. Instead, the race has become well, something else. One of the most recognizable challengers is count Binface. And if you've been following my Twitter feed, you know where I'm going here. Yes, Count Binface, a man who campaigns wearing what looks like a silver trash can on his head. That is what the BRIT's called trash cans. Over there, they call him Bins for what it's worth. Now, if you've never heard of count Binface, just don't feel bad. But here's the thing, and this is the larger point I want to make. Britain has a long tradition of these satirical candidates actually participating in elections. They're not just making jokes from the sideline like our comedians do. They get on the ballot, They campaign, they give interviews, They make ridiculous promises that often sound only slightly more ridiculous than the promises the actual, supposedly professional candidates are making. And now Nigel Farage, a politician who built an entire career arguing that Britain's political class had become a joke, may find himself losing the spotlight to an actual joke candidate. Yes, if you're not a huge fan of these sort of bs artists that just try to sort of ride waves, like Farage, doesn't strike me as a as anything other than kind of a political grifter, right, take advantage of the moment. So to say that there's something poetic, perhaps wonderfully poetic about this is an understatement. The man who made politics into political theater in the UK now is to compete with the actual theatrics of a trash can himself. So watching this unfold, I found myself I was exchange texts my old friend of mine from my hotline days, my buddy Steve Beilifer, and we were sort of laughing about the whole count bin face, and somewhere in the conversation we were just sort of lamenting that, you know, the American system doesn't allow for this, right, And I think he tells you, like, America needs a count bin face. Right. We kind of this has become absurd at times, our politics, right, and we kind of we you know, we have the onion, yeah we have. We have certainly plenty of satire out there, but sort of forcing the satire into the system might actually shake up the average voter to realize, wait a minute, I gotta I gotta start voting with my brain again, not with my emotions. Right. So we were going about this and at first we're kind of joking about it, and then we started brainstorming, you know, maybe every healthy democracy needs a count bin face, right. Britain's satire participates, right, our ours as I said, observes, and what the beauty of Count Binface is that he gives sort of frustrated voter somewhere to go, right, somewhere to do the old double shooter. Right. Here's my double shooters to the system, right, And that's what Count Binface is, right, He's the double shooter. God damn it, you guys suck. I'm going to vote for a trash can, right, And it's a way to essentially vote. I'm rejecting this entire spectacle without actually rejecting democracy. In fact, it's a very small the democratic response. So obviously, look, we don't have that tradition here in America. Our absurdity has a funny habit of becoming reality. So that got me wondering, do we take this to actually a more absurd level. Maybe we're all approaching this all wrong. Maybe instead of pretending politics has become entertainment, we should just accept the premise of the entertainment. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the People's Entertainment Party. The nomination is not going to be decided in Iowa, New Hampshire, or South Carolina. No, we are going to The nomination is going to be decided on candidate islands. Right, we have an island off the coast, you know, just pick one. Right, we can go off the west coast, off the east coast. Right, we'll pick an island. We'll call it candidate Island. Our host Harvey Levin of TMZ, and I say him, I'm not trying to take a shot at Harvey. He's built himself quite a business. I actually think in some ways Harvey is is sort of the perfect mediator here, given I think his sort of dispassionate disdain in some ways embracing of the crazy right. Who's better? You spent decades deciding which celebrity meltdowns deserve our attention, and modern politics is basically his beat. Now every week, candidates could compete in elimination challenges. Week one the Viral clip Challenge. You have thirty seconds to accuse your opponent of destroying America. Go extra points if nobody can explain what you were actually arguing about. We two, you go on Donor Island. Contestants race through an obstacle course collecting super community idols. Week three it's the three hour podcast endurance challenge. You have to survive in appearance with Howard Stern or Joe Rogan without contradicting yourself. Once week four policy week, never mind, ratings would collapse. Producers would have to immediately replace it. No, no, let's do outrage week. No more policy. Okay, I'm kidding, but you see where I want to go here. Underneath the joke is something that genuinely bothers me right now. And this is why, in a bizarre way, going to the most absurd corners might actually bring us back to caring about expertise again. Right. Politics maybe the only profession in America where experience has become a political liability. Nobody wants an inexperienced surgeon, Nobody asks for the airline pilot who's never landed a plane, Nobody hires the lawyer who's never tried a case. But every election side, millions of voters are told that governing experience is exactly why they shouldn't trust someone to govern. Does it get any stranger than that? Now? I don't

blame the voters for this, Actually blame our institutions. They're the ones that stopped rewarding competence. Right, Congress stopped looking like the first branch of government and started looking like another television set. They abdegated their responsibility, so they earn this sort of well, screw you, guys, I'm gonna blow up the system because you don't know what the hell you're doing. You don't even know how to read the Constitution. And then, of course media and thanks to the changes that came thanks to the oj simpsonification of all things media, that created this algorithm of ship storms that we all have to deal with. Right, redir rewards performance more than competency, and maybe we've all adapted to these incentives. So Harvey Levin of TMC, we wouldn't be changing politics. He'd just be honest about the rules. And it brings me back to count Penface. He's funny. By the way, there's a music video that is just it's like right out of MTV in the eighties. I wish I could describe it, but it was just like an eighties retro nostalgic music video that just lambasts farage and promotes the trash can but with such passion. It's fantastic. But the fact is it's a reminder that politicians that they're allowed to be mocked before they're worshiped. Right, we are worshiping way too many politicians. They do not need to be worshiped, and Benface reminds voters that at least these guys deserve more skepticism than we give them, and it reminds people that politics is important. But politicians don't have to be larger than my figures. So maybe every democracy needs someone to say this is getting ridiculous. Britain allows that person beyond the ballot. America usually waits until after we've elected ours. So let's be honest. If this does happen, and I don't look this, Nigel Farraj is so obviously you know this would be you know, but if he happens to lose, is there a more fitting end to Faj's political career if it comes at the hands of a trash can? All right, I want to hit one other topic here, and it's there's a couple of things that have happened in Israel, uh and in the West Bank or the last week. There's rama Manuel's speech, there's what happened to Rocanna, and he's been telling the story and I want I want to probably do more Rocana later in the week on that front, but I think it all signals the same thing, which is a a collective retreat that you're going to see from from the deep partnership between the United States government and Israel that we've that we've all gotten used to over the last couple of generations. But I want to sort of you know, here we are in the year twenty twenty six, and you know, it wasn't that long ago that we were this close to the Middle East piece, And it's shocking to me if you just look at it. You know, if I were in a coma for the last twenty five years, I woke up and be like, oh my god, I mean, we are further away now than we were in nineteen forty eight. And it got me thinking, Like, if you caught my column last week, it was about how I've been obsessed with the fact that the caricatures that Barack Obama and Mitt Romney painted of each other in twenty twelve actually is representative of the basis of the two parties today. And I've been trying to figure out how we got there, right, And I think, and some of you are going to say, well, here he goes, he's going to defend moderation. Your goddamn right, I am I think, actually, this is what happens when moderation stops working. Right, So, like I said, this whole I'm gonna walk you through this year, this whole thing I've been dealing with. I went back and read the campaign speeches, even more of them in four eight and twelve, right, because I went looking for the insults. How is each party trying to be a character? Right? Things Republicans would call Democrats, things Democrats would call Republicans. And what was amazing is if you read most of those attacks that took place then today, and I didn't tell you when they were said, they wouldn't sound unusual at all. They just sound like mundane every day back and forth between the two parties. Republicans calling Democrats socialists, Democrats warning Republicans were becoming nativists, grievance driven, hostile to immigrants. Twenty years ago, those were considered exaggerated caricatures. Today they most sound like descriptions. So why does that happen? Well, my first answer was the it was an easy one. Social media algorithms, echo chambers, all of that matters, and I'd still believe that, But I don't know if it's the if it's the right answer, right. I think it's that those have an impact that that certainly helps amplify where we are. But I think it's something deeper. When moderation repeatedly fails, and by this case, moderation is compromised, right, radicalism stops looking radical. It actually starts looking realistic, because if you can't compromise, then maybe one of the two polls are right. Moderation doesn't usually lose because somebody else made a better argument. Moderation loses when it loses credibility when you can't get a two states solution. Right, If negotiations never seem to produce results, if the status quo keeps disappointing you and people, eventually the people who he said enough, we've tried it earway stopped, they don't. They don't sound like extremists anymore. They end up starting to sound like the only people worth paying attention to, and that perhaps they were the only ones paying attention, right. And Look, this is not an American story, I think, frankly, it's the story of politics in general over centuries. But it's certainly the story of the Middle East. Go back to the turn of this century. Okay, no, Israelis and Palestinians were not at peace, but boy were they close. There was a serious argument inside both societies over whether a negotiated peace was possible. People can debate forever why Camp David failed. There's Raelis have one version, Bill Clinton has one version. I certainly think it's the it's the

Palestinians that walked away from In hindsight, was just it's ridiculous that they walked away. But of course Palistinian have another belief. But either way, we were this close, and everybody walked away. But that's not the point I'm making here. What mattered politically is what happened afterward. Right, they get this close, then right after we get the second Intofada, the suicide bombings, the sharper Israeli military responses, the return of BB. Right, you know, you had those that were not BB trying to be the more moderate forces. You had settlement expansion, more failed negotiations, more wars, a United States that rhetorically criticized the settlements, but that's all they did because we knew the more the settlements expanded, the hard it was going to be to get the two states solutions. And then of course every disappointment made it harder for moderates to defend moderation people like myself who are sitting there going, look what, there's a solution here. But if they're not going to take the solution, who looks like the naive idiot. So if you were in Israeli who believed negotiations could eventually bring peace, every bombing made your argument harder. If you are a Palestinian who believe negotiations could eventually produce a viable state, every failed summit, every new settlement, and every war major argument harder. So every failure became exhibit A for the people who had always said they wanted a maximualist. Right, there are those in the Palestinian society who don't want Israel to exist. That's what a maas. This is why so many people can't deal with a moas. And there is a growing movement in Israel that do not want it to stay solution. And then they get to say, I told you they don't want peace. Negotiation is a waste of time. We've been naive and I could be speaking for either Palestinian hardliner or the Israeli hardliner. That's how the political center collapses. Not because moderate suddenly becomes stupid, but they become a less credible, less believable. The caricature becomes the movement. The movement goes mainstream. And this is why I found Ram Emmanuel's speech in Israel so fascinating this week. It's not about because he criticized BV NANYEO. That's easy, that's low hanging fruit. That guy's been a terrible prime minister, right, I mean, look what he's done to Israel's image. Look what he's done to safety and security. Right, Israelis are more unsafe with BB in charge than they were before he was there. Okay, that is something. It's just a fact. I happen to believe it's him. Others may say no, he's the only one that will defend him. But I just look at there was more peace and stability pre BB than there is today. But it is remarkable who was saying this. Ram Emmanuel spent his entire public life essentially inside the pro Israel mainstream of the Democratic Party. His father fought for Israel before independence. Ram worked for Bill Clinton, represented Chicago and Congress, was Barack Obama's chief of staff. So you're not going to mistake rama Manuel for someone that's going to just use the G word and become part of the anti Israel left and virtue signal, That's not what he did with the speech. So when rama Manuel stands and tell of even says that the US Israel relationship is reaching a crossroads, it is worth paying attention to. His message wasn't simply net Miya who is wrong. It was a lot more uncomfortable than that. Here that Israel cannot assume unconditional American political support forever. Right, if American policy was a two state solution and they're not going to pursue one, then why should we keep supporting everything they're doing? Right, we should be doing everything we can to protect Israel's right to exist, but that doesn't mean you have to support every domestic policy decision they make. And he warned that military success has to be connected to a political strategy. He argued that Israel has to present a credible vision for what comes after the war in goes, because simply saying more war is not a strategy. And he was highly critical of the expansion of the settlements in the West Bank, something frankly that every president other than Donald Trump is criticized. Even Trump has said it's getting a little much a few times, depends when you find him. But we only rhetorically complained we looked the other way as they kept letting it happen. That if you're going to look at various missed opportunities to sort of not allow Bob to end up doing what he did, not stopping them not punishing Israel more during settlement expansion, that is a huge mistake. It's been a huge mistake. Now you warn that Israel risk isolating itself from younger Americans and from the political center of the Democratic Party. This isn't a fringe movement, folks. At the same time, he also make clear you he's not joining the anti Israel anti it's an anti Jewish left. And trust me, it's hard to see the difference with some of the people who espouse this rhetoric. This is why this is why this gets so complicated for some of us, and why it gets complicated for me, because some of these critics are people who are not genuine in their critique. They still have a bit of prejudice in their eyes, and it's hard to it's hard not to see that. Okay, rom def Israel's right to exist. He defended the need to stop Iran from attaining a nuclear weapon. This is a friend of Israel. And if Bibe doesn't see him as a friend of Israel, Bbi, he's got the problem. He also rejected slogans that had become fashionable in parts of the American American laughter, So in other words, he didn't go after Israel. Speaking from one of the polls, Ron was trying to rescue the center. Now, maybe it's not going to work for him, maybe he's the wrong political messenger for this, but it's important that he did it, because whether you agree with Ram's conclusions or not is almost beside the point. The point is that somebody who has spent his career representing the political center now sounds like somebody

trying to save the center before disappears. And that's why I sort of blended it with the column I wrote last week, because this is one of history's cruelest patterns. When moderation repeatedly fails, the radicals don't have to prove their right. They only have to convince people moderation doesn't work. It's a much easier argument to be made. Right. The billionaires and the millionaires, the globalists, and the elites right, the woke academia. It's a much easier argument. So, especially after years of just not getting stuff done, years of disappointment. There's one more angle to this, and this I said in my column, right, we fear extremists, but we root for rebels. The two aren't the same thing. Extremists make us uncomfortable. Rebels are easy to romanticize. And that's the trick in modern politics is convincing people your radicalism isn't extreme at all, that it's a rebellion against a broken establishment. That's true whether you're talking about democratics, socialism, or Magan nationalism, the Israeli right or the Palestinian rejectionists. The ideology may change, the psychology does not. And that brings me back to, oddly enough, where we started today's show. I spent a bunch of time remembering Lindsey Graham and sort of the type of politics he represented, pretty transactional, but always trying to Again, if you're coming up with the best expression of this, it's searching for what is possible, no matter what. And Lindsay was somebody who every once in a while he came from an era of leaders who actually believed that part of their job was occasionally telling their own party. Now, certainly McCain did it, Biden has done it, probably not enough while he was in the White House. Ram Emmanuel's trying to do it now, and you can pay a political price for doing it. And that's the real lesson. Moderation doesn't disappear because extremists suddenly discover better arguments. Appear's because enough people conclude the moderates have run out of answers. I think that's what's happened in Israel, in the Middle East in general, nobody trusts the moderates to figure this out anymore. The challenge for every democracy isn't simply defeating extremists. It's making moderation credible again before enough people decide they're exhausted, they've exhausted every single other alternative. Because once that happens, the caricature doesn't stay. A caricature becomes a movement, then it becomes a party, and if you're really unlucky, it becomes an authoritarian government. That's the thing here, and that's the lesson to take away from this. Some of you may hate this moderation, but Without it, we don't have a pluralistic small dey democracy. History will show you, in fact, the time machine is coming up and I'm going to get there that it doesn't matter which extremist side wins the argument. If they get control, they want control. That's not a democracy. Keep that in mind. This episode of the Chuck Todcast is brought to you by Fan Duel. So it's been the biggest stage in world soccer. It's here. Every goal changes everything, and we're getting closer to the end. Now. FanDuel is giving you every reason to root for every single goal. They've introduced something called every goal pays. Bet on a match, get bonus bets for every goal scored in that match. Again, you bet on a match, you get the bonus bets for every goal scored in that match. So more goals means more bonus bets, and all you have to do is turn on your token. So look, we're in the semifinal, the final four, and Man is a chalk city, right. The number one ranked squad in the world is France. Number two is Spain, number three is Argentina. Number four is England. Oh, they're all four in the semifinals. Guess what I guess these these the folks that did the seating notes knew what they were doing in this one, right. Guess what, there's a dirty little secret this. The reason there's been so much success with this event is because it worked very similarly to the best the NCAA tournaments. We love the best, which is a few upsets early, some fun dark horse teams to follow, and then the best of the best make the final four. I'm all in a messy and it's a total Miami thing, right. We all want to find our we all want to find our rationales. I'm rooting for Argentina because it's the only team left in the Americas. It's the only team left in our hemisphere. Messi's a Miami guy, right, adopted Miami guy. So I'm all things Argentina. I don't know if they actually pulled the sucker off, but back to back would be something else, right, you know I am? But I'm genuinely looking forward to both matches and I think we're guaranteed, no matter what, an incredible final. Whatever you think of soccer, you came in, it's soccer skeptic. You're getting the best of what this sport has to offer. So from the opening whistle to the final kick, let there be goals. On FanDuel. Visitfanduel dot com and get started at twenty one plus in select states. For Kansas and affiliation with the Kansas Star Casino, it's eighteen plus in DC, Kentucky, Wyoming. If you have a gambling problem, call one eight hundred Gambler or one eight hundred MI Reset, or call one eight eight eight seven eight nine seven seven seven seven. You can also visit CCPG dot org slash chat. In Connecticut, you can visit the MD gamblinghelp dot org. In Maryland for help, you can visit gambling Heelplinema dot org. You can call eight hundred three two seven five zero five zero. In Massachusetts, you can call one eight seven seven eight Hope and Why, or you can simply text hope and Why New York in order to get some help with any gambling concerns. Finally, you can also call one eight seven seven seven seven zero seven eight sixty seven. If you're in Louisiana, we are going. As you know, this is what I do. Every week. I take a anniversary of the week in history, extrapolated out because I think it's relevant to what is happening today? So where are we going on our time machine? July seventeenth, nineteen thirty

six, or in Spain? This is the war that every generation believes is about them. If you're a real student of history and politics, this is something you too may have noticed over the years, because if you spend enough time reading serious books about politics or even longer essays trying to explain why certain democracies succeed or fail, eventually somebody's going to bring the Spanish Civil War. It happens over and over again. George Orwell did it? Ernest Hemingway, Abraham Lincoln, Brigade Picasso's Garnica. Spain becomes the analogy. Every generation seems to rediscover it. Sometimes the comparison is insightful. Sometimes it feels like the writer has been waiting twenty years for an excuse to quote Orwell. But after seeing Spain come up again and again and again, I thought it would be fair to ask start asking a different question, why Spain? What was so extraordinary about one civil war in one European country that writers, historians, and political thinkers have been returning to it for almost one hundred years? The answer, I think is that every generation eventually believes the Spanish Civil War was about their politics or about them. And of course the irony is that most of us don't actually know very much about the Spanish Civil War it so it's not like taught it in American grade school or American high school. You know, you probably had to go to a little deeper dive into European history in the twentieth century if you were going to get a get scholarship on the Spanish Civil War. By the way, at the end of this segment, I'm going to give a few book recommendations for you on this, which I want to By the way, I'm going to start making a a regular thing if you want to know more about this. Here's the Here are the two or three books I would recommend. So here's the basics. Right, we know Franco, we know Hemingway, we know orwell maybe Picasso, some of you know. Maybe you know the Abraham Lincoln brigade. Beyond that, the story may get a little fuzzy, right, that's okay, And you may remember, oh, this is like the fascist versus the socialists. Right, there's truth to that, But let's be honest. All of that is hopelessly incomplete because Spain wasn't simply a war between left and right. Right. There's a lot of people who cleanly always want to make that case. It was what happened after millions of people gradually stopped believing the other side had a legitimate right to govern. By the way, do you know it's a theme with my show today, But I digress that lesson has never really stopped haunting democracies. So let's go. Spain became a republic in nineteen thirty one after King Alfonseau the thirteenth left the country. The Republic inherited almost every division imaginable. There was rich and poor cities versus the countryside, landowners versus labor unions, the Catholic Church versus the anti clerical reformers, regional nationalists, right those separatists, monarchists, liberals, socialists, communists, anarchists, the military. The Republic was trying to modernize Spain. There was land reform, education reform. They were trying to reduce the influence politically of the church. They wanted civilian control of the military. They were fighting for women suffrage, give women the right to vote, to supporters. These all looked like long overdue small D democratic reforms, but to many conservatives they look like revolution. And power kept changing hands through elections, each side increasingly treated the other's victories as something more dangerous than an ordinary small D democratic loss. Political violence became more common. Churches were burned, political assassinations multiplied. The political center kept getting smaller and smaller and smaller. And that's arguably where our story begins. Not with the Civil War, but it was with the collapse of something I've been trying to make mainstream again, pluralism. The election of February nineteen thirty six, a left wing Popular Front coalition narrowly wins. The coalition itself is hardly unified. Think of him as it was, like moderate Republicans and Republicans at those believers in the Republic over there, socialists and communists anarchists were kind of operating. Nearby, you had the regional nationalists, and they all kind of were in coalition together. They agreed on defeating the right, and they agreed on remarkably little else. Is that sound familiar to you. The right, of course, was convinced Spain was sliding towards revolution. The left became convinced the right was preparing to destroy the democracy itself existential right, right, It makes it easier to go after the other side if you think they're trying to eliminate you. So then came the event that pushed everything closer to the edge. Jose Calvo Sotelo, one of the country's leading conservative politicians, was abducted and murdered by members of the republic's owned security forces, along with some left wing militants. To much of the political right, this wasn't simply another political assassination. It suggested the republic itself could no longer guarantee political neutrality or basic security for those that disagreed with the government. So the military conspiracy took hold. The murder accelerated it. On July seventeenth, military units stationed in Spanish Morocco revolted. The next day. That uprising spread into Spain itself. And here's the part that many people forget. The coup failed, because that's what this is, how this begins. It was with a coup, right, it failed to do what coups are supposed to do, didn't seize the country, divided the country. The failed coup essentially became the starting gun for the civil war. Now, the nationalists were hardly one thing themselves. He had military officers, monarchists, traditional Catholics, conservatives, the Falange. This was the explicitly fascist movement. They were the fascists. Franco gradually welded them together into an authoritarian coalition under military command. Now the republican side here, and

this is not republicanisn't the American Republican Party? Just the pro democracy, pro republic side of things. They were not very unified. Yes, they included the liberals, the socialists, the communists, the anarchists, the regional nationalists, the anti Stalin Marxists. They fought Franco and they fought each other. The communists didn't trust the anarchists. By the way, who could trust any anarchists? But I digress. The anarchists, of course, right, distrusted everybody. That's kind of on brand. The arguments weren't merely philosophical. Some allies arrested one another, some disappeared, some were executed. The left's internal divisions became one of Franco's greatest advantages. Again sound familiar. Spain wasn't simply democracy versus authoritarianism. Also a reminder that coalitions can destroy themselves from with them well. The outside world quickly arrived. Britain and France declared non intervention. History's great diplomatic ironies. The policy applied most strongly to the countries willing to hopey it. Germany and Italy openly supported Franca. The Soviet Union supported the Republic. Spain became a rehearsal really for World War Two. German pilots tested bombing tactics, Italian troops gained combat experience. The Soviets expanded their own political influence. One bombing became symbolic if you watched Oppenheimer or read the Chaibird book, you know Oppenheimer was a donor to the cause of the communist side of things, which was on the pro democracy side in Spain. There was one bombing in particular that became very symbolic, Guernica. This is Picasso's painting made the destruction itself famous, but Guernica represented something else as well. The twentieth century was learning that civilians themselves had become part of the battlefield. Right, civilians were targeted, and that used to be like, well, this is something you just didn't do anymore, and that Lesson obviously did not stay confined to Spain. There were Americans that showed up. There were twenty eight hundred who volunteered in what became known as the Abraham Lincoln Brigade. Many of them were actual communists, some of them were socialists. Some of them believed fascism had to be stopped before it ever spread across Europe. Of course, one of the most remarkable contradictions of this war is what black Americans did. They served in integrated units in Spain, years before the US military integrated. Oliver Law, a black labor organizer from Chicago, commanded white American volunteers in combat in nineteen thirty six and thirty seven. Folks that happened in Spain before it ever happened in America. Man history has a way of producing some fascinating ironies, right, and then, of course there were all the famous writers that showed up. Hemingway arrived believing the Republic represented civilization's best hope. His Spain eventually became for whom the bell tolls for generations of America. It was Hemingway who was the emotional narrator of this war. George Orwell's experience could hardly have been more different. He joined a militia, he was shot through the throat, and then he watched Soviet back communists begin suppressing other anti fascist groups. He fled Spain, convinced that propaganda and totalitarianism were not monopolies of the political right. The road to him writing Animal Far in nineteen eighty four runs directly through his experiences in Barcelona. John Doe's pastors came to Spain sympathetic to the republic. The disappearance and execution of his friend Jose Roblez shattered that confidence. He returned believing too many idealists had become willing to excuse political murder as long as their side was committing. Spain didn't simply divide a country. It divided some of America's greatest writers at the time. So it's another reason every generation keeps returning there. Spain seems to contain almost every political argument of the twentieth century in one convenient package. Militarily, Franco gradually gained the advantage as coalition was more unified. Germany and Italy supplied aircraft, troops and equipment the Republicans possessed courage sympathy from the world and major cities, but the sympathy wasn't ammunition. Madrid fell in thirty nine, the Republic collapsed, an authoritarian coalition with the Falange providing the fact its fascist wing won the war, and Franco ruled Spain until nineteen seventy five. Folks, because people sometimes forget the full outcome of this story. In fact, they sometimes tell the story as though moderation somehow prevailed at the end. It did not. Authoritarianism prevailed for almost forty years. Political parties disappeared, free elections disappeared, Regional languages were pressed. Tens of thousands of Spaniards were executed. After the war ended, many more spent years in prison. Hundreds of thousands went into exile. Pluralism didn't emerge from the battlefield. It emerged only after decades of a dictatorship convinced enough Spaniards that, guess what, we need moderation again, because no extremist faction could permanently govern by denying that anyone else had no place in the country. In fact, when Franco died in seventy five, Spain faced an extraordinary question, how do you build a democracy after a civil war in nearly forty years of a dictatorship. Something Cuba's got to address. It's something that as well is going to be addressing. It's something that Russia couldn't successfully do right. Their democracy lasted all of eight years before Putin took over. But you know what have you seen Spain today? Because the answer became Spain's democratic transition. Political parties were legalized, elections returned, a new constitution was written. Former enemies agreed to compete again rather than eliminate each other now. Unfortunately, people had to die and rights had to be gone for forty years for people to realize that moderation and pluralism is the only way to make this work. Part of the transition rested on what became known as

the Pact of Forgetting. The idea was simple, Spain could stop using the civil wars a political weapon long enough to build a democratic future. That decision, by the way, still remains controversial to some. Many victims never received justice from the Franco years. Many mass graves actually remain unopened, Families waited generations for answers. Modern Spain still argues whether democracy required too much silence, so the transition is not morally clean. Let's not pretend it was what in our country either was it it was politically practical, It wasn't built on agreement, it was built on exhaustion. Enough Spaniards finally concluded that politalism, it's not idealism. It's survived. And perhaps that's why every generation rediscovers pain. It's not because history repeats itself so neatly. Every generation that invokes the Spanish Civil War is really talking about itself, its own fears and polarization, its own uncertainty about whether democracy is still strong enough to survive. It's a debate we have every generation. It's frankly normal. But just don't forget that Spain was talking as well. And what Spain had to say was painfully simple. Democracy isn't tested when everybody agrees. Democracy is tested when you believe your opponents are profoundly wrong and you still accept the right their right to compete with you for political power in a democracy, and sometimes you're oponent, who you adamantly disagree with, is going to win and be in charge. Can you handle it well? Spain failed that test. They had to go through a civil war and then forty years of a dictatorship, a painful democratic transition, left many wounds still not fully healed before enough Spaniards conclude it that sharing power with people you deeply dislike was preferable to try to try and to kill them. So America in twenty twenty six, let's not pretend we're Spain in nineteen thirty six. We are not. Every polarized democracy is not headed towards civil war, all right, And every commentator who invokes Spain is a pale imitation of George Orwell or Hemingway, no matter how badly they want to be George Orwell or Hemingway. But Spain does remain worth studying because every generation eventually thinks the Spanish Civil War is about them. The truth's a little different. Go look into Spain for answers to your own questions. Maybe you'll find them, but you'll find out all the wrong ways to do this. That's the reason to understand this. The least we can do is understand what Spain was actually trying to teach. Let's hope the rest of us never need quite that much of an education of an actual civil war. A second one here and somehow forty years of authoritarian rule before we figure out what we figured out better than anybody else, and what every other country eventually tries to emulate. The only way to govern a huge democracy is through pluralism. By the way, as I promised here, I'm gonna do this here. Sorry, as I promised a couple of book recommendations on the Spanish Civil War.

If you want to go deeper on this, let me give you two. One of course, is or While right, you might as well read him Homage to Catalonia. It's his first hand account of being there, so that I thinks that one on ramp, but frankly a better one. If you're if you're sort of if you're listening to me, you're kind of an American political junkie. So this next book, it's by Adam Hawk's child. It's called Spain in Our Hearts and it really does sort of over index on the American you know, sort of Americans that went there and sort of the American side of things. So I think it'll it'll just feel familiar and probably be an easy way in. And then after that, you know, if you get hooked on more, you can go deep, deep, deep. There's plenty of great scholarship out there on the Spanish Civil War. But there's just two quickie book regulations, ask Chuck. All right, let's do a few questions. Uh, and then I got my quick, modest proposal for fixing Baseball's Hall of Fame. All right, first question, all right, let me get this here comes from Brad Greetings from Michigan's third District. As someone who doesn't enjoy partisan politics, I really appreciate your presentation of politics for the rest of us. Thank you. Let's make that slogan great again. It feels like we're stuck on a hamster wheel where each new president can simply undo the last administration through executive orders, appointments, funding decisions, and shifting agreements, while Congress and the courts do little to stop the cycle. How do we break the pattern and get back to the lasting governance and real progress? Brad Well, you ask how we get there, and the answer is, we've got to figure out how to make Congress great again, how to make Congress relevant, how to accept the premise these are not coequal branches of government that actually our Constitution indicates essentially that Congress is the supreme branch of government. Right there is a bit supremacy there. Unfortunately, our partisan divide inside of Congress makes it where the speakers are more partisan than they are institutional. And the only way to make Congress sort of get its power and influence back is to have a speaker that frankly speaks for the Institution and the Constitution over above their own party. Now you may think, well, that sounds both easy and impossible. Correct, it is. It is It should be the easy part of this, and yet it is so hard. Mike Johnson wouldn't be there but for his loyalty to Donald Trump and the most furthest right wing. And I promise you Aqim Jefferies, if he does not play kate his far left wing, he will not be if he becomes, if he gets enough votes to become speaker, he will be a very weak speaker. Tip O'Neil is probably the last speaker we had who I think was at least equally put the Institution and the party. At least he's sort of I don't want to say he was country over party, but he was country and party at the same time. Now he had the luxury of that. Democrats have been in charge of the House of Representatives for forty years, and so there was an institutionalist mentality that tip O'Neil b in. Heerded from previous speakers and sort of kept and governed, and he was sort of now. He also had an extraordinary diverse Democratic conference because back then you still had the solid Democratic South who were very conservative the Reagan Democrats in the eighties, so you had a third of his constituents a speaker and as leader of the Democratic Party were actually siding with Reagan. So frankly, the circumstances and the incentives were actually there for him to be the institutionalists first literally with Tom fall I mean, and then you just saw the whole thing broke down, right, and it was literally, Tip O'Neil is the end of the year, if you're doing your historical marker here, right, Jim Wright becomes speaker and new Gingridge rises to just takes right out and we have what we had all the you know, the politics of today's Congresses were essentially born out of the feuds between Jim Wright and new Gingridge. So ultimately that's our issue. By the way, this is my way of telling you go to new sphere this week and check out my conversation with Jamie Raskin. Jamie Raskin, before he was a Democratic Member of Congress from suburban from suburban DC inside of Maryland, he was a constitutional law professor. He's been thinking about this for decades, not just years. And I had a conversation where I said, I want to interview Professor Raskin and talk about this sort of systemic issue that we have, and then there's the Democrat from Maryland that I want to speak to. And so, to his credit, he accepted both premises and he talked about at times there are some things that he believes in that he knows his party would not necessarily because in the near term could quote unquote give up some power. But he talks about various ways. But look, we both are in the same camp. We know Congress is too weak. The question is how to you strengthen it, and can you strengthen it in this current polarized environment that we're in. That's where I'm skeptical. We know what we need to do. The question is do we have a politics that can make it happen. And I'll tell you, Brad, I'm not convinced that we are what I think we need is a coalition speaker, right, we need, and we may get there. I think if you see if the two parties are become controlled by the Progressive dsa adjacent wing on the left, and MAGA and a Nationalists stay in charge of the right, then I think you may have a group of Democrats who aren't comfortable with their leadership and Republicans aren't comfortable that there might be the opening and you might get what you've got in Texas a coalition speaker. There have been coalition speakers and a couple of other state legislatures around this country. Like I said, people don't realize that this just happened in Texas in the last five years. So I think that that's our only hope here to get an institutionalist who realizes that Congress is no longer

functioning the way our founders envisioned, and that's ultimately that's at the heart of everything. Our over reliance in the courts. And if you're on the left or right, you get frustrated that the courts have to weigh in. But why do the courts have to adjudicate because Congress won't do its job. So I know some of you get so mad at the Supreme Court and the Judiciary, but they shouldn't have to be dealing with about half the issues they have to deal with. You didn't have a dysfunction of Congress who didn't have the guts to deal with these issues themselves, including abortion rights. By the way, all right, next time, Charles. All right, a fellow, Charles, I'd love to discuss with you all of our various nicknames where you chas at Charlie, at Chad Chuck. Right, But I digress, he says, Chuck. I heard your answer about how Trump could potentially serve another term, but I don't think this you propose works under the twenty second Amendment because the to year exception applies to a term in which someone else was elected. Could a more plausible route be running as VP and succeeding a president who resigns, or becoming Speaker and moving into the presidency through succession. I'd love your take on whether either of those scenarios could legally work. Go use Charles, by the way. In my scenario of making that work of I also have the president secretly getting an office an OLC memo written that would reinterpret the twenty second Amendment through the prism and then once you have an official government take on that, it does have different type of influence on the courts. But I don't want to get into that. Your other two scenarios, look, I think the I think both both. Here's the thing, you are not eligible to look read the twenty second. You are not eligible to be vice president if you are not eligible to serve as president. That is my one question mark about the running mate, right, It's very explicit in there. So that's one thing. The speaker thing is a different story. But I also think it's a temporary because then you'd have to have the House sort of a ferment. Again, you might have a different situation. That one is the one I think you is probably if you're looking for the this is a weird thing to say the cleanest constitutional workaround. Speaker of the House is the one that strikes me as potentially that way to go, or even I'll give you another one, Secretary of State, but then that the problem with that is Secretary of State comes after the speaker right in the role. So then you're you're having a Now do I think Donald Trump could tell Mike Johnson what to do? Yes? Do I think Donald Trump could tell you know. And that's the part of this is I'm not one hundred percent convinced that if JD. Evans assumed the vice presidency that he would somehow then just back away and let Trump have it. And I don't think you have it unless the voters explicitly know that's what you're going to do, And if you had popular support for something like that might be

harder to stop than you think. I don't buy that you'd have popular support for that. So I think I think your speaker is the one that's more plausible. I don't know if he ever gets on the ballot, and the other one because again the Constitution's pretty explicit you can't serve as vice president if you're not eligible to be president, and I don't think he could go the whole way. This is why I think the potential and again, what it creates is a legal question. I take your point on the twenty second amendment. That's why I think resigning before January third is about the only way to make that work. I think the only other one that works if he serves the full two terms is the speaker of the House route which also seems absurdly precarious. All right. Last question comes from Gary are Hey checking team. After watching Joe Cernin's recent interview with Trump, I was reminded of a long standing question I have as an expat who's lived in France for fifteen years, where political interviews often feel far more probing and substitute. Why do so many high profile American interviews lack tough direct questions and meaningful follow ups When politicians dodge our audience expectations, shorter tension spans, friendly partisan outlets or access journalists in the Delaine. There are certainly strong journalists in the US, but why do so few prominent ones consistently press for actual anths? Thanks? Gary, are part of it's our culture, right. There's a culture of it in the UK that's different where and we have such a This is a free press, right. The UK doesn't have a fully free press. Right. The government can come down in some ways. We have a fully free press, which means you have a fully free way to dodge certain things. Trust me, there were people who stopped coming on my show because they didn't want to be interviewed by me. Lindsey grant him John Kennedy, Republican from Ted Cruz right, these guys Nancy Pelosi right. It was mostly on the right, these at the at the end, but certainly plenty on the left as well, Joe Biden, so you know that there. So what you have is too many politicians can cherry peck and yes, right, Joe Kernin is supportive of the president's general agenda. So Kernin has to be the lead if CNBC is going to get access to Trump. Right. So it is it is really that transactional relationship that you see. But let me there's you know, I let me let me defend the non you know, there's there's to me I viewed. Let me tell you how I viewed interviewing how I still view interviewing politician, which is I want to learn something. I'm not there to be a candidate to debate. I think the the some of the things that some people love, you know, like and I could tell you I used to do, like well you did a great job, you know, and those you know, it would always come from partisans because I supposedly exposed some hypocrisy. Right, you'd ask that question and now they didn't give you an answer that told you anything. But it was always good for you for exposing

the hypocrisy, which I think. I think our job is to let people know, hey, you're saying this, but it seems to be this, and you make them explain their contradiction. Now, some people will say, well, you need to tell them their contradictions full of shit. Okay, you can do that once and never interview somebody again, or you could do what I believed I was doing for my audience, which was making it plainly obvious that somebody was obfuscating and somebody was full of shit. So I think every interview deserves different styles. I went pretty hard one time at Ted Cruz because I know he was purposely avoiding something, and I just kept going and going and going. There's a famous YouTube you can go see of Creuse refusing to endorse Trump and we go back and forth and it goes. There's another one where you Know Trump, where Cruise comes on. It is the last time Cruse was on with me, where he talks about you know that, the idea that Trump could ever lie. And then I brought up what Trump said about his wife and his father and say, of all people that might have an idea of Trump's capability of lying, I would assume it would be you, and he just got mad at me from bringing his family into the conversation rather than you know, the point is that I didn't you know, the audience got something out of it, I guess, but how much did we really learn about what they're thinking about? So I can tell you that I would always balance those things and sometimes if they were just you know, you know, as an interviewer, I think I was always trying to channel the audience. You tuned in to meet the press to be informed. Some people tune into a cable channel to go rob wra So look, I could tell you that was my style, but I believed you can have and I think we're proving it here with the check toddcast is you can have a more substantive interview, understand every contradiction the politician holds without being an asshole. And I think that some people equate tough interviews with a member of the press behaving like a like an asshole. Sometimes that is necessary to channel the rage of the public. When you feel like government isn't responding to a crisis, that's when I always have felt the most compelled to be angry. Angry on behalf of everyday people not angry on behalf of an ideology or a politician or a party. But I think there's a sort of look I'm not I think Kernin is never going to ask Trump a tough question because he doesn't want to make Trump mad, because he doesn't want to lose his relationship with Trump. But Kernin is not going to sit there and be he doesn't that's not that's actually not the compact he has with his viewers. Joe's compact with his viewer or is that he's the conservative at the table. So I think that audience expectation and you setting it with the audience also matters in the different form. So I understand where you're coming from. You're like, well, this is the only American journalist I've seen interview the president where you're standing in France.

But I think that that's I'm trying my best to explain sort of how it is. You know, do I wish politicians enjoyed going back and forth? I mean, this is why my favorite interviews are people like Dick Cheney who didn't who accepted the premise of tough questions, John McCain, who accepted the premise of tough questions. Barack Obama would take one, but he'd lecture me and tell me why I was. You know that I'm looking at it this way and I should be looking at it that way. Sometimes I got a little wonky when he and I would go back and forth on certain things. But ultimately, sometimes sugar works every once in a while, splash of cold water works, every once in a while, heat works. But I promise you light always works the best. Heat can expose some hypocrisy or certainly put a put a put a spotlight on it, but light teaches you more than any other aspect of conducting interviews. All right, With that, a quick little sports rant. The announcement by Justin Verlander that he's going to retire is reigniting one of my favorite baseball debates. Who was the best picture of this, of this basically this generation that's retiring Kershaw, Suersier or Verlander. Now I've got two. I've got two cats in this fight for what it's worth. When his career began, I was a Kershaw guy. I have a Kershaw jersey. As my son was growing up and became a Nats fan, I dropped my Dodgers jersey and you know, for me, my Dodger fandom ends now, and as far as I'm concerned, in two thousand and five, the year the Nats were born. I love Clayton, I love watching Kershaw. I really enjoyed him. I love Max. So I am invested in this debate just as a fan, Max versus Kershaw versus Erlander. What's fascinating about these three is what I what I did, and I went through a various deep dives. It's like, you know, you know, and look, I can make the argument I'd rather have Max pitch Game seven. I'd rather have Clayton be my ace in the regular season. You know you can, and certainly Vernlander is the one that's going to be the most durable. So I think you can. I can. I could spin any of the three and spin them all at one. But obviously the best argument for Max is actually not the regular season, although a great He's got great stats there too. What separates Max from both Kershawn Verlander is his success in the postseason. And so then I went, I went down this rabbit hole, and I wanted to compare. I was like, looking like, you know, the big three here versus say Randy Pedro Shilling, you know, of the of that sort of late nineties early ATS era. You know, we keep sort of the various the various entities that you could go in different ways. You've got Steve Carlton, Nolan, Ryan, Tom Seaver kind of in a grouping. Maybe you throw Jim Palmer in there. And it made me realize, especially when you look at the following metric in the particularly in the eighties, nineties ATS and arguably even today, which is you have your regular season argument, which ninety five percent of Hall of Fame voters focus on,

and then you have the postseason argument, which clearly doesn't have the sway that it does perhaps in other Hall of Fames. And so I want to propose a small little thing. It is increasingly clear to me that the best way to handle these debates about who's the greatest of all time in baseball in different ways, we should have two Hall of Fames. We've got the one we have now in Cooperstown, which is your career Hall of Fame. We need a postseason Hall of Fame. Now. We've had a postseason now going back to the mid seventies, right early to mid seventies. So this is now fifty years right, Baseball was approximately just under fifty years old when Cooperstown, you know, sort of came to be. So this is a good mark. We have fifty years of postseasons, never mind the World Series before that, but we've had postseasons that were bigger than the World Series. Because here's what you realize that as our postseasons have expanded, there's a real difference between some of the greatest pitchers of the regular season eras versus the greatest pictures in postseason. Two people really three people jump out at me in different eras. Dave Stewart of the Oakland A's who beat Roger Clements twice in Game sevens. Kurt Schilling, mister bloody sock, who's you know, this has never been about politics, And this is to me, I really believe it's his regular season just doesn't quite add up, but his postseason does. And actually, if you look at the stats, Steven Strasburg, because once you go after the next three, the number four picture of this era is Strasburg. And I think sometimes because Strasburg came in with so much height, and it's like, but he's not a Hall of Famer. He didn't win all these cy Young's and no hitters. But he had a really, really good career, and he was really one of the greatest pictures of his era, probably one of the five best pictures of his generation. It's just that in the accumulation of statistics, he doesn't cut it. Here's why I would love to see a postseason Hall of Fame, because the really special players are Hall of famers in both. Right, Max would be a Hall of Famer in both, Sandy Kofa's a Hall of Famer in both, Bob Gibson a Hall of Famer in both, Reggie Jackson a Hall of Famer in both. And that would be you know, Bill Simmons has this idea of creating a pyramid of that, you know, to try to separate out the guy who took ten years to get in or the Veterans Committee or Harold Baines versus your universe nearly universal guys you know that got into the Hall of Fame, like what's coming in an Albert Pools or something like that. But the postseason what here's the way I look reason why I think this matters. Fans memories are postseason driven now, not regular season driven, and so the greatest memories we all have are not of what happened on May seventeenth at a four h five start, but it's what happened in game six or game seven of the division series, the you know, game five of a division series, game seven a of a of a championship series, or of course game six or seven of a World series. I think it'd be a lot of fun to have. I think it's something fans care about, and I think if you again, it allows us to create a real sort of tier. Are you a two Hall of Fame guy or a one Hall of Fame guy? And you know what, there are careers that are very postseason heavy and deserve acknowledgment in the postseason. I'm talking to you Andy Pettitt, and I'm talking to you Fernando Allen's well right. And then there are guys who have this irregular seat, like a Justin Bernlander. And then there's guys like my man, Mick's Suser who would easily be And I tell you I would have a few things. You have to have a ring. If you didn't win a ring, I'll say there's another gnat that might make it. If it's just a post if there's a postseason Hall of Fame. Ryan Zimmerman is gonna come up short in the in the career Hall of Fame by the metrics that are used. But go look at at at his performance in the postseason generally, and by getting you that that that ring, you get a little bit of a different look, right. I would say it's a ring and a minimum ten games of postseason work that you're judged on. But again, the reason for this, I don't want to hear from you baseball purist, but honest, you know it's a small sample size. This is about the fan experience, our memories. Ultimately, hall of Fames are about the greatest moments that matter to us, the fans, and the postseason is a huge part of this. So come on, mister Manfred, let's do it. Let's launch the Postseason Hall of Fame. And it's basically all of these things celebrating just the postseason. Maybe it's a wing on Cooperstown, maybe it's m LB, and maybe it's something you do uh in a in an in another in another area, another city, But I think it's I think it would it's a way to create more debate and in some ways settle some of the greatest debates. All right, with that, I will shut up. I had a lot to say. These two days a week means I'll have more to say. And by the way, you get a special third episode because you know what comes Tuesday. It's Super Tuesdays with Crystallizen. So we've we're actually sneaking in three different episodes this week just for you, my favorite political chun tison. With that, I'll see whend we upload again. H